David

You already said that. Team sully does not want the stolen base to be used in their system. You see, you need the attempts to be able to figure out the information. If you totaly disregard it you do not have the 70% to be able to use to do your stealing. I give up. I can make up crazy scenarios to prove my points too...but I'm not gonna bother.

That's not the case at all. It's not that "steals could hurt you 30%." A basestealer has to be able to steal successfuly at over 70% for basestealing to be at all beneficial to an offense. If you have guys who can steal at 80-90% (like, as sully mentioned, Carlos Beltran), you steal. If you don't, you don't. There's no lack of belief in stealing. It's a belief in stealing only if it's to the benefit of the offense. Otherwise, why bother stealing? Ok Take away the 30% statement. How do you know that a player could steal at 70% or higher? Past performance. There is none so what are you going by? His college or HS? I'm starting to see the whole chicken/egg aspect to this too... :lol: Since you're talking about players coming up through the system...

That's not the case at all. It's not that "steals could hurt you 30%." A basestealer has to be able to steal successfuly at over 70% for basestealing to be at all beneficial to an offense. If you have guys who can steal at 80-90% (like, as sully mentioned, Carlos Beltran), you steal. If you don't, you don't. There's no lack of belief in stealing. It's a belief in stealing only if it's to the benefit of the offense. Otherwise, why bother stealing? Ok Take away the 30% statement. How do you know that a player could steal at 70% or higher? Past performance.

That's not the case at all. It's not that "steals could hurt you 30%." A basestealer has to be able to steal successfuly at over 70% for basestealing to be at all beneficial to an offense. If you have guys who can steal at 80-90% (like, as sully mentioned, Carlos Beltran), you steal. If you don't, you don't. There's no lack of belief in stealing. It's a belief in stealing only if it's to the benefit of the offense. Otherwise, why bother stealing?

ARam mediocre? Riiiigggghtttt..

I guess the question would make sense if every player on this hypothetical team was homegrown and had also never attempted a steal in the minors as well. But since that isn't really ever possible, then I would imagine that the point is that you can look at a lot of players' past history to see whether or not they are a decent base stealer. Someone like Pierre had years and years of data to look at, we didn't need to tell him to try to steal 50 bases for us last year before we knew how good he was at it. But if baseball goes the sully method in 2015 how do you know? My point is that somebody has to make the attempt to even get the numbers for you to base your decision on. Also, don't you need a decent sized sample too? Pierre has that and you're right but what about guys that don't. What if Murton could steal at 82% of the time but since they never try how would we ever know? Not only that but what if in the scenerio you are talking about, you have a manager that runs him all the time and his rate stinks because of it. He's hovering around 64% so you disregard him and never steal? If we're really going to get into this extreme hypothetical, I'll go ahead and contend that at the major league level, on the baseball field, the #1 priority is to win. The minor league system is meant not so much to win as it is meant to develop and evaluate potential major leaguers. Therefore, you can allow guys who have the potential to be good base stealers (i.e. faster guys/good baserunners) to steal in the minors and you'd be able to get a fairly good read on how good they would be at stealing bases.

there are so few players who are actually good at both getting on base and stealing bases that it's worthless to talk about. yes, if the cubs could get a guy with a high OBP and a high steal percentage, i wouldn't mind it. however, aside from the few guys in the league, they just don't exist. i'll take a guy like youkilis over a player who isn't really good at anything, like pierre. it's overvalued, although not as much as it was before. teams are learning from sabermetrics and moving on, leaving teams like the 2006 cubs in their wake. Who said anything about getting on base and stealing? Are you saying that if a bad hitter like Izturis could steal at a 80% rate is not better than than an Izturis that could steal at a 62% rate? Also, to get any steal rate you have to actually attempt to steal in the first place. On your team you have guys going station to station and play it safe depending on the batters skills ALL the time. Isn't Youkilis good at getting on base? I would assume he is if you have him leading off thus he's good at something, correct? Getting on base is primary. If the guy can't get on base at a good enough rate, you don't want him in the lineup anyway. Even if the guy can steal at 95%, you wouldn't want him playing because he would be a drain on the lineup by not getting on (I suppose that hypothetical 95% guy could be of some value as a pinch runner, late in the game when it's not likely he'd wind up having to come to the plate). Sure, Izturis stealing at 80% is a better player than an Izturis who could steal at 62%, but neither one is getting on base enough for it to matter. As for the bolded part, I'm not sure what you're getting at. We have plenty of past numbers on these guys that tell us how efficient they are at stealing bases, just like we have OBP numbers and SLG numbers and so on. We don't need to have, say, Soriano actually attempt steals to have a decent idea of how good he is at it. That would be like saying you need to see Neifi go out there and suck at the plate to know how good (er, bad) he is at the plate.

... I think we're all a little gunshy when posting an ERA like that. Way to take one for the team. Figured as much.

6 pages and we still don't have the starters posted up?? http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/images/players/mugshot/ph_150302.jpg Jason Marquis - 14-16 6.02 ERA (2006) vs. http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/images/players/mugshot/ph_217096.jpg Barry Zito - 16-10 3.83 ERA (2006)

When his fishing buddy told him to leadoff with Bellhorn...

Not as far as I know. ...not that there's anything wrong with that.

Quite disturbing. LMAO

http://static.flickr.com/44/143560419_7ca89b50a2.jpg I did a Google search for RNez and this is what came up... First of all.. what the hell is this about? Second.. what are AGony and RNez doing with the rest of those guys?

If not jones then who? Theriot/DeRosa - RF DeRosa/Theriot - 2B But, like I said, it's the first spring game. So... Piniella has said that he's not going to use derosa in the OF. I know that. I was just laying out what the options were because he asked who could start in place of Jones against a lefty.

Yea, that looks like Marquis's old picture, too. I don't think they're new.

Maybe, but I'd rather have Wood at his best in the 7th or 8th with runners on than in the 9th with nobody on. thats what eyre and howry and wuertz are for. Sure, they can do it. But Wood, at his best, is better than any of them. The notion that your best reliever should be your closer is a myth, or a misconception, at best. yet it means nothing if wood holds them in the 8th and dempster loses it in the 9th That's true of any inning with any pitcher, not just the 9th and the closer. yes but it means nothing if the pitcher in the 9th cant hold a lead, kinda like Dempster Ok. But the solution is to have someone pitch the 9th who can hold a lead. The solution isn't to put your best pitcher in for a relatively easy 9th inning situation.

Maybe, but I'd rather have Wood at his best in the 7th or 8th with runners on than in the 9th with nobody on. thats what eyre and howry and wuertz are for. Sure, they can do it. But Wood, at his best, is better than any of them. The notion that your best reliever should be your closer is a myth, or a misconception, at best. yet it means nothing if wood holds them in the 8th and dempster loses it in the 9th That's true of any inning with any pitcher, not just the 9th and the closer.

Maybe, but I'd rather have Wood at his best in the 7th or 8th with runners on than in the 9th with nobody on. thats what eyre and howry and wuertz are for. Sure, they can do it. But Wood, at his best, is better than any of them. The notion that your best reliever should be your closer is a myth, or a misconception, at best.

Maybe, but I'd rather have Wood at his best in the 7th or 8th with runners on than in the 9th with nobody on.

If not jones then who? Theriot/DeRosa - RF DeRosa/Theriot - 2B But, like I said, it's the first spring game. So...

I love this lineup... My only complaint is that Jones is in against a lefty (aren't we up against Zito?), but I guess they aren't going to sit him in the first game either...

I miss the ZZ Thorn rants.

Why should the crapshoot that is the playoffs (less so in basketball, but true in all sports, IMO) help you determine how good of an owner he is? There's a lot more to go on than that.

That crazy deal with the holy water...

Even though, considering our payroll, our problems don't really stem from ownership, I'd love to see this happen. I know we can't just throw money at the Cubs' problems, but Cuban seems like the type that would bring in forward thinking baseball people, which is exactly what this team needs.